The tragic irony intensifies. Barack Obama’s election supposedly represented an historic breakthrough in the struggle for justice and human rights in America. The success of that struggle depended on respect for the principles of the American Declaration of Independence, the Constitutional sovereignty of the American people, and Constitutionally secured civil rights of all individuals in the United States. Yet every day brings reports of some new travesty signaling hostility to those principles, the abandonment of the Constitution, and the end of respect for those rights.

Along with securing their persons and property against abuses of government power, nothing is more essential to maintaining liberty than the Constitutional rights that give citizens assurance against repression and abuse as they speak and act on political matters. Of these matters, issues that involve respect for the Constitution are the most critical, since without the Constitution the people lose the institutions that assure their political participation and authority.